When You Have the Floor

Last week, I had the privilege of speaking to a room full of university students studying to become actors, singers and dancers.

It was an interesting audience to stand in front of. These are young people who have chosen careers that require them to be seen, judged and evaluated almost constantly. They audition, perform, rehearse, receive feedback and compete. They are learning their craft, but they are also learning how to manage rejection, comparison and the inevitable moments when they don't quite get it right. So I decided to talk to them about perfectionism.

I called the presentation The Perfect Trap, and I began by asking them to think about the difference between wanting to do something exceptionally well and believing that they have to be perfect.

It is a particularly important distinction for young performers. The qualities that make someone successful - discipline, ambition, attention to detail and a desire to improve, can so easily become tangled up with the belief that anything less than an outstanding performance is a failure.

We talked about what perfectionism actually looks like. The endless rehearsal because you are frightened of getting something wrong. The reluctance to audition because you aren't certain you are good enough. The comparison that happens in the studio when you look around and decide that everyone else is more talented, more confident or more naturally gifted than you are. We talked about how, underneath perfectionism, there is often less ambition than we might think and more fear: fear of judgement, rejection and the possibility that if people see us while we are still learning, they might decide we aren't good enough.

I wanted them to understand that excellence and perfection are fundamentally different pursuits. Excellence allows you to be unfinished. It expects mistakes, feedback and growth. Perfectionism can make a mistake feel like a verdict on who you are.

As I was speaking, though, I found myself thinking about something beyond performance. I was thinking about leadership. Perhaps because, as a deputy, I have become increasingly conscious of what it means to be given the floor.

There are moments in deputyship when you are quite literally standing at the front of the room. You might be addressing a school assembly, speaking to staff, presenting to parents, leading professional learning or having a conversation with students about something that matters. For those few minutes, the dynamic changes. People stop what they are doing and give you their attention. That is a remarkable privilege.

And I don't think we should ever become so accustomed to our position that we forget what that attention represents. Having the title of deputy doesn't make what we say influential. It simply means that, at certain moments, we have been entrusted with the opportunity to speak. What we do with that opportunity is where the leadership comes in.

I have come to believe that one of the most important skills a deputy can develop is the ability to read the room. Not simply noticing whether people look interested, but understanding the culture, context and people in front of you well enough to know what they might genuinely need to hear. That requires us to be paying attention long before we stand at the front.

We need to know what our students are experiencing, what conversations are happening in classrooms and corridors, what pressures our staff are navigating and what the broader mood of the school might be. We need to understand where our community is before deciding what we want to say to it, because leadership communication cannot exist separately from context.

The same message can land very differently depending on the audience, the timing and the tone. As deputies, we have a responsibility to understand those nuances. We need to be able to take what we know about our community and translate it into communication that feels relevant, authentic and purposeful.

That was something I was conscious of as I spoke to those university students. I could have given them a generic presentation about resilience or working hard or overcoming failure. Instead, I wanted to speak directly into the world they are preparing to enter. I wanted to acknowledge their ambition and their high standards, while also challenging the idea that they have to be flawless in order to be successful. The response afterwards reminded me why these moments matter. Two people approached me after the presentation and told me how much the message had struck a chord with them. They spoke about their own experiences of perfectionism and the expectations they place on themselves. What stayed with me wasn't simply that they had enjoyed the presentation. It was that it had made them reflect. That, to me, is where communication becomes leadership.

We can never completely control what someone takes from our words, but we can be intentional about what we put into the room. We can think about the conversation we are trying to create rather than simply the information we are trying to deliver. We can ask ourselves whether what we are saying might challenge a mindset that is no longer serving someone, or give them language for something they have been experiencing but haven't been able to articulate. Those opportunities matter because influence in schools isn't always exercised through the formal decisions we make.

As deputies, much of our influence happens in the spaces between those decisions. It happens through the way we speak to students, the conversations we have with staff, the stories we tell, the behaviours we model and the ideas we choose to bring into the collective consciousness of the school. Sometimes it is a significant strategic decision. Sometimes it is a five-minute conversation that causes someone to see something differently. We don't always get to know whether we have made an impact. That is one of the strange things about leadership. We can spend hours working on something and never see the eventual effect it has. We can speak to a room full of people and watch them walk away without knowing what, if anything, they will carry with them. Every now and then, though, someone tells you. And those moments are worth paying attention to. They remind us that influence isn't necessarily about being the most charismatic person in the room or delivering the most polished presentation. It is about understanding the people in front of you well enough to know what might resonate, and then having the courage to say it.

That is where the connection with those aspiring performers becomes particularly interesting. They are learning how to stand on a stage and connect with an audience. They can rehearse the words, choreography and music, but once they step onto the stage, they still have to notice the room. They have to respond to the energy of the audience and find a way to make the performance meaningful to the people sitting in front of them.

As deputies, we have our own stages. Sometimes they are literal. Often they are not. And the same principle applies. We can prepare meticulously, but we also have to pay attention to the moment we are walking into. We need enough awareness of our community to know when to challenge, when to reassure, when to provoke reflection and when simply to listen. The temptation in leadership can be to think that because we have been given the floor, we need to fill it. We need to demonstrate our expertise, say everything we know and make the most of the opportunity to be heard. But perhaps the responsibility is different. When you are given the floor, the moment isn't really about you. It is about the people who have given you their attention. Our job is to make that attention worthwhile.

The presentation to those university students reminded me that having the floor is not the same as having influence. Influence comes from relevance, authenticity and connection. It comes from understanding your audience and having something meaningful to contribute to the moment they are in. And perhaps that is something both performers and leaders have to learn. We don't get to choose every audience, every room or every moment. But when the opportunity comes to step forward and speak, we can choose whether we simply deliver what we prepared or whether we genuinely connect with the people in front of us.

For me, that is part of what deputyship is about. There will be moments when the school gives us its attention. When staff stop and listen. When students look up. When a room is quiet and waiting to hear what we have to say. Those moments can pass quickly, but occasionally, if we have read the room, understood the moment and found the right words, something shifts. Someone thinks. Someone reflects. Someone sees something differently… and that is when having the floor becomes something much more important than having a platform. It becomes an opportunity to lead.